Why Washington Is Broken

Congressman Delaney has an Op-Ed in The Washington Post about our broken Congress and a bill to fix it. As he writes,

Representative democracy is in crisis in the United States. One of the three pillars of our system of government — the legislative branch — is failing. The current Congress has shut down the federal government, bickers constantly and increasingly does not speak broadly to the American people. Obvious problems, from a struggling middle class to a flawed tax code to crumbling roads and bridges, go unaddressed. The American people have certainly noticed; according to Gallup, 80 percent disapprove of Congress

We can’t let 535 people continue to limit the progress of a nation of more than 300 million.

After two decades spent gaining a data-driven perspective in the private sector, I believe that problems on this scale are usually caused by structural failures. Our electoral process has created perverse incentives that have warped our democracy and empowered special interests and a vocal minority. Congressional dysfunction is the logical result of closed primaries, too many gerrymandered one-party seats and low-turnout elections.

To address these problems, I filed the Open Our Democracy Act in July. If passed, the legislation would mandate open primaries for House elections, begin the process of national redistricting reform and make Election Day the equivalent of a federal holiday.

Addressing Delaney's solution to the problem of "broken government" starts with figuring out what's wrong. Delaney doesn't pay much attention to this issue, but I'm happy to do the work for him. Or at the very least, I'll quote some guys who will do the work for him. The key here is understanding the US is a presidential republic, and that this form of government is actually a pretty terrible form of democracy.

We often talk about the "greatness" of American democracy, but we're a huge outlier. There have been quite a few presidential democracies in Latin America. All of them have failed. Basically, the US is the only presidential democracy to have remained stable for a substantial period of time, and there's some very particular reasons for that. I'll get to that in a second. But first, what's so bad with our government? The great Yale Political Scientist Juan Linz identified four key problems back in 1994 in his classic book The Failure of Presidential Democracy. To quote Mainwaring and Shugart's review:

First, in presidential systems, the president and assembly have competing claims to legitimacy. Both powers are popularly elected, and the origin and survival of each is independent from the other. If a majority of legislators favor policies different from those the president pursues, a dramatic conflict between the assembly and the executive can erupt. “No democratic principle exists to resolve disputes between the executive and the legislature about which of the two actually represents the will of the people” (p. 63). Linz argues that parliamentarism obviates this problem because the executive is not independent of the assembly. If the majority of the assembly favors a change in policy direction, it can replace the government by exercising its no-confidence vote.

Second, the fixed term of the president’s office introduces a rigidity that is less favorable to democracy than the flexibility offered by parliamentary systems, where governments are not elected for a fixed term of office but rather depend on the ongoing confidence of the assembly. Because under presidentialism the chief executive cannot bolster his or her authority either through a vote of confidence or by dissolving the parliament to call new elections, presidential leadership can be weaker than that provided by some prime ministers. Presidential constitutions often manifest a contradiction “between the desire for a strong and stable executive and the latent suspicion of that same presidential power” (p. 55). Moreover, it is extremely difficult to remove a president from office, regardless of his/her level of competence and support among legislators and other relevant political actors. By virtue of their greater ability to promote changes in the cabinet and government, parliamentary systems afford greater opportunities for resolving disputes. Such a safety valve may enhance regime stability. 

Just as presidentialism makes it difficult to remove a democratically elected head of government who no longer has support, it usually makes it impossible to extend the term of popular presidents beyond constitutionally set limits. Although such provisions are not inherent in the regime type, most presidential constitutions bar presidents from serving successive terms. Presidents therefore have relatively little time to pursue their projects and, as a result, are often tempted to try to accomplish a great deal in a short term. “This exaggerated sense of urgency on the part of the president may lead to ill-conceived policy initiatives, overly hasty stabs at implementation, unwarranted anger at the lawful opposition, and a host of other evils” (p. 66). 

Third, Linz argues that presidentialism has a winner-takes-all logic that is unfavorable to democratic stability. In parliamentary systems, “Power-sharing and coalition-forming are fairly common, and incumbents are accordingly attentive to the demands and interests of even the smaller parties” (p. 56). In presidential systems, the direct popular election is likely to imbue the president with a feeling that he/she need not undertake the tedious process of constructing coalitions and making concessions to the opposition. Moreover, “The danger that zero-sum presidential elections pose is compounded by the rigidity of the president’s fixed term in office. Winners and losers are sharply defined for the entire period of the presidential mandate... The losers must wait at least four or five years without any access to executive power and patronage” (p. 56). 

Fourth, Linz argues that the “style of presidential politics” is less propitious for democracy than the style of parliamentary politics. In contrast to prime ministers, a president is called upon to be both the head of state and the head of government, and the exigencies of these two roles at times are in conflict. The president’s sense of being the representative of the entire nation may lead him/her to lamentable intolerance of the opposition. The absence in actual presidential systems of a monarch or a ‘president of the republic’ deprives them of an authority who can on occasion exercise restraining power (p. 62)."

In short, presidential democracies are primed for conflict, lack the intra-government mechanisms for solving conflict, lack the democratic mechanisms for resolving conflict and encourage a type of politics that favors greater conflict. With this unfortunate disposition towards political conflict, a couple things tend to happen. The first route is gridlock. It becomes politically favorable to sabotage the ruling party whenever possible. Long-term gridlock causes extra-legislative points of power to emerge. For the US, this means an overactive President and Supreme Court that essentially creates legislation. Once this process no longer becomes tenable, the government dissolves, usually in some form of military junta.

Needless to say, we're lucky to have avoided it. And the saving grace of American politics through the twentieth century was the strange heterogeneity of its political parties. Largely, this was due to Democrats' willingness to accept apartheid as a cost for loyalty in the South. But it led to strange situations where incredibly liberal politician like Nelson Rockefeller were Republicans and incredibly conservative politicians like Strom Thurmond were Democrats. It wasn't surprising for people to reach across the aisle or for voters to have candidates they preferred in both parties. Both liberal and conservative ideologies were widely represented.

The breakdown of this heterogeneity is often attributed to civil rights, but I believe that it was inevitable regardless. This comes from the problem of "first past the post" (FPP) voting. In a voting system where a candidate is elected by a majority of the vote, voters are most likely to get their interests represented if they engage in strategic voting. This usually means to vote for the candidate most similar to your beliefs but also most likely to win.

What do I mean? Imagine a scenario with 4 candidates: Green, Democrat, Republican, Tea. I hope the ideological spectrum becomes clear. Voters pick the candidates most ideologically similar to them, and it turns out that the Democrat wins. This isn't all that bad for the Greens. They got their second-favored choice. For the Teas and Republicans, though, this is a disaster. The Democrat was their third-preferred candidate. So, the next time around, they drop their candidate and vote Republican. This leads to a conservative victory, since the liberals split the vote between their two separate candidates. In the end, this leads the Greens to drop their candidate, leaving us with a fiercely competitive two-party system.

Admittedly, this doesn't always happen so smoothly, but given enough feedback and enough iterations, an FPP voting system finds a sense of equilibrium between two ideologically pure parties. This pattern is empirically confirmed, which is why most countries don't actually vote this way. Those that do tend to have active movements in favor of alternative voting systems. This is what was happening in the UK not too long ago. But it hasn't happened yet in the US, and that's a huge problem. So we all engage in strategic voting. While this is the easiest way for everyone to get their views represented in Washington, this is the worst-case scenario for the American government.

So that's the gist of the problem. We have a government that can't handle conflict. We have a voting system that creates tons of conflict. We're stuck.

How do we get out of this? I don't really know. The last time the US had this much political partisanship was before the Civil War. That ended well. Things ended pretty poorly for most Latin American presidential democracies too.

You have to judge Delaney's recommendations from this perspective. These are all programs that I support, in the name of better democracy, but they only go so far. Gerrymandering is a problem, no doubt, but there would be plenty of partisanship due to Americans' ideological sorting. It turns out that liberals prefer to live with liberals, and conservatives prefer to live with conservatives. This process is known as ideological sorting, and it occurs both between states, and within states. By that, I mean that people tend to move to the state they ideologically prefer, and they tend to live in a ideologically comfortable part of that state. Once you take ideological sorting into account, gerrymandering doesn't have that large of an effect on partisanship.

Open primaries are a nice concept, but research on Louisiana and Washington shows that they have almost no effect and on the partisan composition of governments. Parties remain powerful even without party-driven primaries. This was the chief conclusion of the only expert witness in California's recent drive to create open primaries.

Expanding voting roles is a partisan issue. Democrats believe that they win when more people vote, and Republicans tend to believe that they do better when less people vote. It's hard to see how any self-interested political party would support policies that they know would harm them. Plus, there is a strong ideological current within more conservative circles towards less voter rights. This comes up in the Tea Party push to abolish the direct election of Senators. Nonetheless, research on voting patterns tends to show that total turnout really doesn't matter all that much. Bigger aspects of voter preferences, including punishing incumbent parties, have a much stronger effect.

Again, I don't think that Delaney is proposing something bad. I think these are good ideas, just as I think reducing money in politics is a good thing. But I'm not sure if there's any simple legislative fix to the fundamental problems in the US government. There are fundamental flaws within our democracy, and it will take constitutional amendments to solve them. Considering the current level of partisanship, these aren't all that likely to happen.

I hope that it can continue to limp on for a long while, with small bursts of legislative activity occurring during "wave" years. Otherwise, we'd be best off getting used to a state of permanent dysfunction.